L'Ottava Vita (per Brilka) by Nino Haratischwili

 L'Ottava Vita

(per Brilka), the Eighth Life for Brilka by Nino Haratischwili is a sublime, superb, wonderful and enchanting book; you can't lose the chance of reading it!

When I received it, I choose this one during the summer time attracted by the story and the cover, I didn't notice that it was long 1100 pages.In general I love long books, but receiving it during the summer-time with other books that I needed a review I thought....

Oh my...

I tell the truth: I was tempted to use the press release sent with the book. "Yes, come on, I will read it later with more freedom, in the while let's give to the reader an idea of what it is..." Just, all the times I tried to using the press release paper, I thought: no...It's too beauty I must read it. Every single word. And I just threw it away!

I waited for the arrival of fall, a season of year more opportune and adapted for sagas and family stories. 

I was right. 

I ended this book yesterday night; I woke up in the nights for reading more because I was peaceless. I wanted to know the end, I wanted to find peace for that characters and for a history that it is sad, absorbing, incredible.

Every night I dream these characters, and they're best dreams than not the ones related to Covid-19.

I appreciated the thoughts of the author, her magnificient way of describing the history of a century, in Georgia but Russia as well, and these characters are uniques and at the same time, expressions of the mirror of the times. In recent years we will find also problematic like drugs, and new addictions, alcohol apart. 

This book is an analysis of the various, different societies known by Russia and Georgia. 

From the Tzar to the arrival of a system, the Communism one that woud have collapsed only in 1989 with  the polemics that followed. 

Looking at the Communism "from the inside"is a complete different history than looking at it as a western citizen. 

To us Gorbacev has always meant freedom from a system unable to give answers, hope, future to people, but I was surprised to read many critics; as we will see history lived by the characters will tell another history.

Because of opportunistic reasons and the inability of learning  in the eastern states what meant the word freedom and the creation of different, democratic states, everything became maybe more confused and dangerous and there wasa different...perdition. 

More freedom meant also, with the end of Communism, new desperations and exasperations. If the Communism had brought passivity (and many suicides as well because people didn't find any kind of purpose in living a life without purposes or projectuality) dictated by the strong regime, without opposition, made of silences, made of falsity, corruption, freedom meant introduction of western touches, and the lost of that certainties that where still solid in the Eastern part of the world.

It's a story that starts in Georgia, this one in the home of a man who owned a chocolate store.

Mr. Jashi created several interesting, delicious chocolate recipes for attracting his customers to his store, but the best recipe never shared in public was the one of a cup of chocolate, considered by mr.Jashi absolutely terrible, because if at first was satisfying, later the final bitter taste that would have left with the time would have been the most cruel one. Substantially, every person who would have drunk this chocolate would have been cursed.

And this one, was symbolically and practically the curse of the family Jashi.

As said Brilka in the final pages of the book every curse has a spell in grade of "killing" the curse. In the case of family Jashi was the...brown color. I don't want to reveal more. 

Mr.Jashi had had several children: Stasia, my favorite character, Christine, Meri, Lida. 

The last two ones won't be taken in great consideration while Stasia and Christine will absorb pages till the end of the story. 

Stasia was a rebel, someone sincere. She wanted to become a great dancer, joining the Russian Ballet in Paris, while, she fell in love for Simon, who worked in the Army and married him at just 17 years.

Simon went away soon and Stasia spent months and months without her groom. Once, she asked to a priest of helping her: she wanted to escape, searching for her husband. 

Communism was becoming a reality and peasants were in revolt. 

She escaped away arriving at Pietrogrado where she stayed for more than two years in the house of an aunt, Thekla. Although Thekla's house was depredated by everyone  with various difficulties life went on well.

Sure, the world represented in Pietrogrado is a world of confusion, destruction, devastation. Peasants strongly disagree with the new rules dictated by communism and they didn't want to give their properties or lands to the government. That ones must have been horrible years.

Stasia once prepared the famous cup of chocolate and her aunt Thekla asked for it often. In the while Stasia started to take dancing lessons but when her fantastic Jew dancer teacher left the city, she felt that another important person, to her, was gone. And she wanted to return home. She tried to convince her aunt to do the same but Thekla will take another decision close to a warm cup of chocolate and a fatal substance.

It was 1919.

Yes, the thematic of suicide is felt in this book  and you will find several people who will decide for this resolution for a reason or another but always because of an intense desperation, the idea that their time was over and that they couldn't tell anything new to anyone or just because they wanted to continue to live in the past and they couldn't see anymore a present or a future. Suicide is read like an escapism.

The shadow of her aunt and of her teacher will stay close to her forever. Simon will join his wife sometimes and they had two children, Kitty and Kostja. 

Christine at the same time, beautiful woman, married Ramas an older but affectionated man and started to spend the existence she wanted in luxuries of various genre. 

Ramas was an important supporter of Communism and of the Little Big Man, an important "piece" of the party; Ramas didn't lose his house, or his lands when the Communist became reality because he had donated wagons of money to the cause and so he could keep everything he had, all his books, paintings, and every object you can think at. In this case there was private property.

The Little Big Man, once in visit during a feast at the house of Ramas, fell in love for Christine. 

Christine couldn't avoid the pressure of that man and she started to visit the house of her lover regularly. It was a sacrifice she did for saving the existence of her husband, who, strangely was always away for work, as ordered by the Little Big Man, for obvious reasons. 

Ramas, at first happy and cheerful, understood at a certain point that something was wrong: there was just a thing to do!

Stasia, at the house of Christine for growing her children Kitty and Kostja, with which she hasn't never had a good relationship because she wasn't made for being a mother, knew Sopio Eristavi. Sopio was a rebel woman and had a son called Andro; she was a firm oppositor of the new regime.

Sopio knew that a lot of people were deported and lost their existences. Stasia was intelligent but she didn't understand completely her friend. What she admired of her was the wonderful relationship with her son Andro, something completely unknown to her; her children preferred the attention of their aunt Christine, who, childless (she remained pregnant of the Little Big Man but sorted out the story quickly!) had much more humanity.

Christine, being in contact with important exponents of the Communist Party told to Stasia that maybe her friend was at risk, but Stasia didn't notice it, didn't take in consideration what said her sister. So Sopio was brought in a camp and later was killed. Andro, her son, remained at the house of Stasia and Christine, and grew up with Kostja and Kitty.

Kostja at some point left the house for entering in the Naval Army. There, after a while  will meet Ida. Ida was 40 years, she was a beautiful lady and with her lived an unforgettable passion. Then, one day, guessing that a new world war would have started soon, Ida said at Kostja that she didn't want to see him anymore.

Oh, Kostja was traumatized by this situation; he searched for this lady, asking informations and whatever he could, spasmodically. Later, he would have discovered the truth and the rest of women Kostja had, mostly of them in their 20s also when he was pretty old, were important to him just for his pleasure and nothing else. 

Ida in her altruism, when Russia was a destroyed place after long years of war, where people walked like zombies because of poverty, caresty and starvation will re-discover french composers thanks to a talented piano player, an eyeless girl...

Kitty fall in love for Andro and she remain pregnant. Then Andro leaves for joining the nazists as a sort of spy; considering what happened to the mother preferred in this way. It was the wrongest decision of his existence because Andro wasn't a boy for it. The communist revenge against Kitty was cruel.

She "lost" her baby thanks to Mariam; later, once she was OK, digged the grave where Mariam had buried the baby for seeing his face, for seeing his baby; looking at that horror she vomited but asked to the baby of not forgetting her. She wouldn't never have forgotten that baby born dead because of other people's hands.For a revenge. 

Andro will be captured and put in a camp becoming just the pale idea of who he was.

Mariam, with which Kitty shares the terrible secret of her pregnancy, her prisonery and the terrible homicide of her baby, falls in love for Kostja. Then, one night, during a feast, Kitty notices close to Kostja a beautiful lady, with a beautiful voice: oh my God! she was the one who tortured her, the one who ordered to Mariam of killing her baby!

Kitty shares these informations with Mariam... And what happen is terrible.

Kitty leaves Georgia and Tblisi, because she can't live there anymore, being involved in a criminal case; she lives in London where she meets a lady, Amy, married but in a relationship with a girl named Fred; there, she is becoming a singer. She is followed, silently during the long years of esilium by the closest friend of Kostja, Giorgi.

At the same time, Stalin dies and a new man, Chruscev is at power. The new leader admits the horrors committed in the past, promising new freedom.

We leave Kitty and we return to Georgia.  

Kostja after the delusions experienced and disenchanted about love, after all he didn't love Mariam as he loved Ida, will marry a girl called Nana. Nana won't live a happy life close to him but they have Elene. Elene will have two children with two different men called Daria and Niza.

Daria was beautiful, a girl like Christine. Same stunning beauty, same curse. 

She meets a married man when she starts the career of actress, that will make her strongly unhappy. Niza is more rebel and she would want to be accepted by everyone, because she is not beloved at all so she talks too much, searching to begging for some love, she tries all her best for being loved, sometimes causing messes. She is the narrating voice of this book; Niza loves reading, writing. She meets at the Green House the son of Miqa, (terrible destiny, poor boy because of a movie that they wanted to realize and because of Elene...) Miro and they become lovers. 

But the disgrace of Daria changed the planes of Niza and she will go away.

In the while, socially, the country is devastated, because yes, the Communism was over but Georgia became and still is a peaceless land.

It will be Brilka, Daria's daughter, just 12 years, that will bring new life in Niza's existence. She controls her existence thanks to various tics, and manics created for avoid disgraces.

Stasia is the most dreaming character. She will always look in a corner of the garden where Thekla and Sopio and later many more people will play at cards all together. A connection with the other world, with the shadows of he past and phantoms that you will meet again also in Kitty's story, never disconnected at the end of her life by Andro and their potentially beautiful love-story.

You can find pieces of yourself in all these characters. Personally I saw my father several times once dead so I am with Stasia, but I know also what it means living a controlled existence like Brilka does because of traumatic events; I know what it meant to search for the approval and love of other people, committing errors because we all would want to be loved. I know what it means having dreams; as everyone I see phantoms and shadows of the past.

The author is spectacularly divine. If at first I didn't understand the meaning of the cup of chocolate, because I personally thought that curses happen, later I understood; with Brilka I understood what it means breaking a curse, starting something new, not cursed, but blessed, real, and happy! And I felt joy! 

I didn't tell you all the stories, I know that these character will stay with you forever. This one is a book that will surely end in our reread list of books! 

Highly recommended!

I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of this book. 

Anna Maria Polidori